“What’s the catch on the everbank foreign CD’s? If something looks too good to be true it usually is…”
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I’ve had three CDs, in different currencies, with Everbank over the past year. During a time when the dollar was falling, I lost 13% with Everbank, much of it due to the Icelandic Krona, but have lost a little money in the SAR and NZD.
I’ve had better luck with the currency ETFs (FXE, FXY, etc.) because I could get in and out whenever the market was changing.
IMHO, Everbank is not a good place to park your money.
Also, I use brokered CDs because it’s easier to manage multiple CDs in a brokerage account rather than having them spread out over many institutions. Too easy to miss maturity dates & instructions, and I like knowing what we’re getting into before it happens. With bank CDs, they won’t tell you the rate when the CD matures and rolls over, until it’s already done.
A word of warning on municipal bonds…
In an inflationary environmnet with artificially low rates, it would be wise to use caution here. Also, a number of municipalities own some of the toxic paper from the housing bubble (derivatives and mortgage paper). They are underfunded, and could face possible bankruptcy in many cases — revenues are down because of lower property and sales tax receipts. Then, you have the pension issues — probably underfunded in most cases.
